As time has gone on, the constantly re-made "special editions" have diverged more and more from the original source, and it's become harder and harder to get the original editions.

The general attitude is that this is just some naive thoughtlessness by George Lucas, who sees no value in authenticity. I don't know exactly what Lucas thinks, nor is his intent in the matter king, but he clearly has fairly sophisticated views on the matter.

People who alter or destroy works of
art and our cultural heritage for profit or as an exercise of power are
barbarians, and if the laws of the United States continue to condone
this behavior, history will surely classify us as a barbaric society.
The preservation of our cultural heritage may not seem to be as
politically sensitive an issue as “when life begins” or “when it should
be appropriately terminated,” but it is important because it goes to the
heart of what sets mankind apart. Creative expression is at the core of
our humanness. Art is a distinctly human endeavor. We must have respect
for it if we are to have any respect for the human race.

These current defacements are just the
beginning. Today, engineers with their computers can add color to
black-and-white movies, change the soundtrack, speed up the pace, and
add or subtract material to the philosophical tastes of the copyright
holder. Tomorrow, more advanced technology will be able to replace
actors with “fresher faces,” or alter dialogue and change the movement
of the actor’s lips to match. It will soon be possible to create a new
“original” negative with whatever changes or alterations the copyright
holder of the moment desires. The copyright holders, so far, have not
been completely diligent in preserving the original negatives of films
they control. In order to reconstruct old negatives, many archivists
have had to go to Eastern bloc countries where American films have been
better preserved.

In the future it will become even
easier for old negatives to become lost and be “replaced” by new altered
negatives. This would be a great loss to our society. Our cultural
history must not be allowed to be rewritten.

There is nothing to stop American
films, records, books, and paintings from being sold to a foreign entity
or egotistical gangsters and having them change our cultural heritage
to suit their personal taste.

The man has thought about this issue.

And his reaction, with his most famous franchise, was as far as I could tell, to heighten the contradictions. The special editions continue their evolution becoming more and more detached, not representing a specific year but representing the ever-changing "now", while the originals become the province of pirates and rebels.

To which the only reasonable response is "Well, yeah, have you seen the movies?"